The Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia, which will be the world’s tallest tower at 1,008 metres, will be completed in December 2018, said Mounib Hammoud, CEO of Jeddah Economic Company.

Contractors working on the SR6bn ($1.6bn) project expect to complete the raft foundation of the tower, which is the largest of its kind in the world, in August this year.

“It is the largest concrete raft in the world. In places, the thickness is five metres,” said Hammoud at MEED’s Arabian World Construction Summit (AWCS) in Dubai. “Everything in the tower is the biggest or tallest.”

The tower will be the nucleus of a new commercial centre to the north of Jeddah – Jeddah Kingdom City. The first phase will be 1.4mn m2 and will include the tower, a mall, a large mosque for 12,000 worshippers together with other residential and commercial buildings.